ladies uttered civil speeches. The old man, whose fur near the neck
had been slashed by a knife-thrust as he came away, explained
pleasantly that he was able to strike good blows still. But he shook
his head nevertheless. It was evil, he said, to have such lovers as
this new one. Her cousin was bad, but this rapscallion must be worse
indeed to harbour her in such a place.... Margot, who knew her London,
had caught him at the barge, to which he had hurried.

'Aye,' he said, 'I thought you had played me a trick and gone off with
some spark. But when I heard to what place, I fetched the guard along
with me.... Well for you that it was I, for they had not come for any
other man, and then you had been stuck in the street. For, see you,
whether you would have had me fetch you away or no it is ten to one
that a gallant who would take you there would mean that you should
never come away alive--and God help you whilst you lived in that
place.'

Katharine said:

'Why, I pray God that you may die on the green grass yet, with time
for a priest to shrive you. I was taken there against my will.' She
told him no more of the truth, for it was not every man's matter, and
already she had made up her mind that there was but one man to whom to
speak.... She went into the dark end of the barge and prayed until she
came to Greenwich, for the fear of the things she had escaped still
made her shudder, and in the company of Mary and the saints of
Lincolnshire alone could she feel any calmness. She thought they
whispered round her in the night amid the lapping of the water.

VIII

The stables were esteemed the most magnificent that the King had:
three times they had been pulled down and again set up after designs
by Holbein the painter. The buildings formed three sides of a square:
the fourth gave into a great paddock, part of the park, in which the
horses galloped or the mares ran with their foals. That morning there
was a glint of sun in the opalescent clouds: horse-boys in grey with
double roses worked on their chests were spreading sand in the great
quadrangle, fenced in with white palings, between the buildings where
the chargers were trained to the manage. Each wing of the buildings
was a quarter of a mile long, of grey stone thatched with rushwork
that came from the great beds all along the river and rose into
curious peaks like bushes along each gable. On the right were the
mares, the riding jennets for the women and their saddl